more so then for example the way ARP dealt with the question in the design on the 2500? I´m not sure I understand the speciffics of what makes the G2 a better merge then alternatives but I´m very interested in where your opinion comes from.

You couldn't pick up a ARP 2500 and go over to a gig. With the G2X, I can do that. I can play blues piano, jazz organ, or experimental electronic music all in one convenient package. It's very lightweight.

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Of cource I would prefer to see them implemented in a way that invites you to connect your own controler so you can use a keyboard that has the righ feel for your style or some other controler of your choice (and perhaps design!)

I don't see why you couldn't create any controller you want. If you want a piano action keyboard you can play the G2 with a Kurzweil PC2 or something. I did that for a while - it wasn't worth lugging that beast around. I have a MIDI banjo too. What does the G2 care?

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Well, such a setting would need to be in some layer *above* the performance level since people have indicated the desire to aply their ideas on velocity curves to patches made by others. This means there would be three layers; this level, the "performance" and the "patch" that would all effect the sound and it´s controll. I think this would lead to extra, unnesicary complexity and further blur what is the patch and what is the synth which, as I feel I should stress again, is making some things realy, realy hard to do.

Maybe another layer, but so what. The G2X is a G2 with a builtin MIDI keyboard. Most MIDI keyboards have some sort of global touch sensitivity. Seems like you are unhappy with MIDI keyboards in general.

You mentioned Buchla. He did have some strong ideas about his instruments having innovative interfaces. I agree that this was very admirable. His modular synths weren't designed for playing switched on Bach and such. They were more suitable for Noodles and other more experimental stuff. He even had touch sensitive surfaces on the model 100 series synthesizers. So there is great irony that he has ended up designing MIDI controllers. _________________--Howard
my music and other stuff

I´m not sure, I never tried. I was involved in picking one up and to get it over to a workshop and I think the same could be done for gigs but that´s pure specualtion on my side.
:¬)

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With the G2X, I can do that. I can play blues piano, jazz organ, or experimental electronic music all in one convenient package. It's very lightweight.

Well, much like the Arp, the G2 needs special care and custom build packaging to travel. It needs less of this, clearly, and one man can lift it, but it´s nowhere near as poratable as a laptop and with a small midi controler. It´s too large for cary-on luggage, speciffically.

Of cource the Arp was a humorous choice, I meant that there are many combinations of modulars with keyboards. As I have repeatedly tried to explain to no avail the big problem here is the implementation of polyphony. In the G2 this has gone completely, terribly, wrong, IMHO.

For example Tassman deals with this by having the whole construction that handles the polyphony *within* the patch, instead of having it´s borders implied to be somewhere just outside the conceptual edge of the patch. This is a very, very important design choice with losts of deep implications. This makes dealing with many concepts typical of keyboard instruments such as chords or other uses for polyphony in advanced ways much more convenient.

In Csound the triggering of a note is manual and so are the definitions of all parameters, either comon to the instrument or unique to the speciffic voice, you can have large amounts of both. That system, even more then Tassman´s, makes it possible to adress speciffic voices in intuitive and meaningfull ways.

One MIDI controled Serge I had the pleasure of working with was capable of polyphony thanks to a programable midi-cv converter that could cycle through a user-configurable set of cv/gate pairs. This was simple, straight forward and very easy to deal with. Tuning obviously needed to be done manually, but in exchange you got unlimited inter-voice comunication within a self-documenting system. It could do 8 voices if it needed to, but of cource then those would be very simple voices.

The G2´s version of solving this problem is somewhat naive by comparison and makes conventional things (by which I mean things akin to other, non modular synths), realy easy and everything else either insanely hard or impossible.

The G2´s look at polyphony and similar matters related to the keyboard is inherently non-modular in character. For this reason I don´t feel the intergration of the keyboard with the modular is that successfull in the G2.

I feel this is a very important point.

I have been mentioning these points over and over again, I´ve given examples, I´ve indicated places where it was done right and I´ve spend countless nights trying to solve these things within the G2 using various constructions trying to tunnel matrixes of interconections through the few busses by the use of modems and related methods. Perhaps there is something realy clever that I missed but I´m quite sure that if I can´t do it then novice users certainly can´t either yet somehow there seems to be a mortal fear of even recognising these problems on this board.

I have now given up.

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I don't see why you couldn't create any controller you want. If you want a piano action keyboard you can play the G2 with a Kurzweil PC2 or something. I did that for a while - it wasn't worth lugging that beast around. I have a MIDI banjo too. What does the G2 care?

I was torn between copy/pasting the previous times I explained this and simply pointing to where they are but then resolved that if nobody read it those times this would likely be a exersise in futility.

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Maybe another layer, but so what. The G2X is a G2 with a builtin MIDI keyboard. Most MIDI keyboards have some sort of global touch sensitivity. Seems like you are unhappy with MIDI keyboards in general.

I´m starting to be realy tempted to start namecalling, asuming nobody will be offended since nobody reads. At least I´m affecting the world by getting my share of google´s server space of indexed web pages. That´s something.

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So there is great irony that he has ended up designing MIDI controllers.

I don´t see why? I design midi controlers too, nothing wrong with that. He probably dislikes MIDI, so do I, but then again, I dislike public transports too and I use those too so......._________________Kassen

Some people really appreciate this "slippery slope" -like yours truly.

Clearly, and that was to be expected. After all, many people like the Korg Triton too.

Err... thanks for pidgeonholing me yet another time.

How nice of you to thank me. I already thought you actively *wanted* to be pidgeoholed but wasn´t sure and now I am.

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Because it is an ingeniously crafted hardware/software package. AFAIK, you only own the G2 engine. The UI of the keyboard versions is a totally different -and unique- ballgame

I don´t own the engine, I was borwing one with the implied option of either buying that one or using it to determine wether I wanted a keyboard version. I´m well aware of how the keyboard works, It´s interface is one of the best sides of the G2, IMHO, as I wrote before. On this board. Several times.

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I don't play the synthesizer as a piano -I treat it as an instrument in its own right. Hence I don't have any trouble with its keyboard or tuning.

why then is your job as a pianist deemed to be relevant by you as a indication of how much of a keyboardist you are in realtion to the G2 and concequently how insulted you afforded yourself to be at the relationship you imagined me to imagine between playing keyboards and being bad synthesists?

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The DACs are fine. It's just that the basic module algorithms are very clean and have no kind of "musical coloration", so they produce a cold, sterile and somewhat lifeless sound. It's up to the user to patch "the funk" into there. From the way you talk about "purity" and leaving things up to the user, you should be appreciating this fact.

Resonating at half the sample frequencey, no matter how consitendly, does not fall within my experience of "purity". The NM´s dac´s sound "pure", the Amiga´s dac´s sound "funky", the G2´s dac´s sound like bad pretentious trance records with extra high frequencies that imply a sense of spatialisation that is very fatiguing after a while and gives me headaches if I´m not carefull. I am primarily interested in conceptual prurity, by the way, my sound is actually very grungy.

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I´m fine with all of this, go your own way, just realise your way is not some absolute truth that aplies to everybody.

Word, boy -word!

Why then promote one way of dealing with velocity as the default instead of writing on the different ways in which individuals could aproach it in order to find their own voice? boy?_________________Kassen

I´m starting to be realy tempted to start namecalling, asuming nobody will be offended since nobody reads. At least I´m affecting the world by getting my share of google´s server space of indexed web pages. That´s something.

I really don't see any reason to get angry ... people are reading what you write, are comenting on it, trying to undersstand, are being friendly in their remarks even in cases whre you are not particulary so.

Maybe not everyone agrees ? I for one see more in the G2 design than in the CSound concept. But indeed it makes certain things harder while making others easier. Things are not as absolute always as one would like to se them.

Hey, did anyone hear that the pope had died?
And apparently they've started knocking down the Berlin Wall.

Which reminds me, normally your bike will get stolen when you park it against a wall. But here was tis guy in Berlin parking his bike against the wall, and later, the guy comiing back, guess what .. the wall was gone.

The G2´s look at polyphony and similar matters related to the keyboard is inherently non-modular in character. For this reason I don´t feel the intergration of the keyboard with the modular is that successfull in the G2.

I feel this is a very important point.

Indeed it is. Here is a simple example patch where a one PM-osc voice is modulated by all other voices except itself. It uses the busses to communicate between the voices. The principle is simple and can be expanded upon by e.g. have a four by four matrix on the buss inputs, to have that 'voice three only controls voice one, etc. thingy' you probably think about.

What the G2 could really use is more buss-lines. This sort of thing is now limited to four voices, but hey where do you find a more than four voice Serge system? Not in my neighbourhood!

Eight buss-lines would have been a better choice as the muxes are eight in and out standard. Me thinks this wouldn't be too difficult to implement.

I´m not angry. I´m disapointed, disilusioned and going on frustrated. I feel I do have reasons for that, see below.

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people are reading what you write, are comenting on it, trying to undersstand, are being friendly in their remarks even in cases whre you are not particulary so.

I would like to point out that this thread started with me trying to help out, trying to hand sugestions I believe are preferable and that are at least more versatile then off the shelf ones. The kind of thing I enjoy about modular synthesis. This was called (and I quote) "a kludge" after which the discussion switched to the sugestion that instead of building your own sollutions, for which people are too "lazy", it would be preferable to have a more limited solution on the synth level.

I then tried to defend not only my preferences but also my point of view that brought me to have those. This was then seen as offensive to pianists for reasons yet unclear.

I would like to place emphasis on the fact that I no longer have anything to gain from improvements to the G2. I´m explaining sides of the synth I fear some people might have previously missed and which could be improved in ways that might beneifit it´s users purely in order to be helpfull; I´m not gaining anything myself.

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Maybe not everyone agrees ? I for one see more in the G2 design than in the CSound concept. But indeed it makes certain things harder while making others easier. Things are not as absolute always as one would like to se them.

I´m not implying anything to be absolute, in fact I am (was) honestly trying to help people see a way that would be *less* absolute and more versatile while leaving the option for the currently established ways of doing things open.

If you would look carefully; the post mosc quotes from (by me) in the post (by him) that caused me to imply nobody was reading adresses the exact things Mosc is refering to to the letter yet which he ignored from that post and excepted from quoting. This is very, very frustrating to me because it´s happening all the time. Look at the copyright debate for some more of that, at one point Eric and me were only begging people to please read what we said and still new attacks, insults and accusations kept flooding in from all sides and noe of those could be any strech of the imagination be said to refer to what we wrote. I could keep rewriting the same stuff yet again but I think I did that enough already.

I have accepted that my way of looking at synthesis, composition, the structure of sound and the nature of expression is not the one found on this board. The people here have a very different outlook that makes it very hard for me to discuss anything in any meaningfull way.

For example, it´s very possible (as you write) that people indeed disagree with me; perhaps they feel that the problem I see with the border of the patch being blurry at the expense of -amongst other things- how well polyphony is defined. Why then are they not adressing this disagreement and are instead trying to pick fights about my apreceation of Bach and Stockhausen? I know Arps are hard to lift; I did that, it was heavy, no need to tell me. Remarkably I was also already aware that vibrato was a established form of expression for some time, i´m fairly certain I could trace it back ever so slightly further then 20 years if need be.

What frustrates me is that I indicated exactly why I think moving velocity curves up to a new, yet to be invented, level is a bad idea. I gave what I feel are some quite solid points defending that idea, yet nobody adressed my points. The one thing I thought was on topic was the exchange you had with Wan over the Pitchbend. That was, in my opinion, a very good point in urgent need of adressing by Calvia.

What runs through this discussion on a different level is that I feel some of the ready made implementations for certain things adversely affect my emotional relationship to this instrument for which reason I am choosing not to play this instrument anymore. I´m fine with that, as I wrote, many people get a deep enjoyment out of many instruments I´d never touch. I realy hope these people will intensely enjoy the G2 for a long time and get a lot out of it. Realy, I do.

What admittedly makes me a bit emotional about this situation is that I used to feel a very close attachement to my NM and that by assotiation, because the editors look alike and the company is the same is now soured. It turns out that Clavia and me had very different ideas about synthesis and that what I used to see as "vision" instead turned out to be a form of underdevelopedness from their perspective which they tried to remidy on the G2. Admittedly this has given me a somewhat negative additude towards Clavia and users of the G2, one I realise is irrational, undeserved and badly founded but which I can´t help feeling. Strangle I fall "out of love" with a synth in a way most people do with other people; I always found that strange behaviour and now I do it myself.

I should leave this board, there is nothing for me here and nobody is gaining from my presence._________________Kassen

Indeed it is. Here is a simple example patch where a one PM-osc voice is modulated by all other voices except itself. It uses the busses to communicate between the voices. The principle is simple and can be expanded upon by e.g. have a four by four matrix on the buss inputs, to have that 'voice three only controls voice one, etc. thingy' you probably think about.

I´ll have a good look at that, for four voices I think it´s quite easy though, just have some signal go to all busses but using a compare value and some logic gates except the bus that has the same number as the voice number, then have each voice read only the bus with it´s number using the same in reverse. For only a few voices you could also use a modem with filters and envelope followers and obvioulsy you could use a buss both ways if you have each patch substract whatever it´s putting on the buss at point where it´s reading from that bus. That´s quite usefull and another thing the synthesis world can learn from the world of telephony.

I´ll have a close look at your implementation.

I also experimented with using the velocity parameter as a switch to select what cc affected certain things so I would have controll over individual voices after they were spawned. That systems is also expandable, even into a little matrix, as long as the matrix has no more then 128 fields. For four voices you could even use this to give each voice it´s own audio input, quite nice. The problem is that for meaningfull ways of using this you need to be able to reset the polyphony cycle to voice 1 at the start of the composition or loop. That´s quite hard, I think.

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What the G2 could really use is more buss-lines. This sort of thing is now limited to four voices, but hey where do you find a more than four voice Serge system? Not in my neighbourhood!

You can have more if you are willing to sacrefice bandwith and have a large overhead.

The Serge in the Cem is actually capable of 8 voices, by the way. In theory. In practice the vca´s are all phucked and that rules out anything invlvoving explicidly defined volume curves at the moment. In partice it´s also not plugged in, and, erm, in practice the exact implementation turns out to be quite confusing to many people even if it´s quite simple. I blame the lack of a written manual. Using it monophonically yet midi controled is sadly much harder then it´s 8 voice default mode which onl requireres you to switch it on.

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Eight buss-lines would have been a better choice as the muxes are eight in and out standard. Me thinks this wouldn't be too difficult to implement.

Indeed, and eight is also the amount of cpu´s in a G2X meaning quite a few patches will be using that many voices. The systems I found for inter-voice-bussing don´t scale nicely though, perhaps yours does.

[edite]ok, this scales nicely up to 8 busses, nice. At the expense of mix ratios you could mix before going into the busses, I think that should make it work with just one bus; leaving this open for four parameters. That´s already enough for some fairly interesting stuff. I thought at first that that would cost headroom but then again that´s not such a large issue here since you are already having the mix of three signal after that mixer.

I didn´t dare doing a variation of this, by the way, because I didn´t think I could depend on thw cpu clocks being synced, if they are I think that should be documented because that would be very relevant yet hard to proove at home._________________KassenLast edited by Kassen on Sun Apr 03, 2005 7:08 pm; edited 1 time in total

I should leave this board, there is nothing for me here and nobody is gaining from my presence.

Ok, so things ran a bit hot. But don't we say over here that 'the soup is never eaten as hot as it is served'?

To state that nobody is gaining from your presence is in fact incorrect, as e.g. I have enjoyed many of your contributions. I thank you for that. But here is a free country and you can freely do what you feel like. And your choice will be respected.

Thanks Rob, I know you care for my ideas, I just find it much more enjoyable to share them in person if that´s the one citerium.

I´m not running hot, by the way. I said I wasn´t angry and I meant it. I´m disapointed, mainly with myself. I made a incorrect estimisation and lost some time. I also incorrectly estimated how much the "feel" of a instrument affects me.

Anyway, please also see the edit I made to my post above about your patch. We should call tomorow morning about our apointment._________________Kassen

I should leave this board, there is nothing for me here and nobody is gaining from my presence.

Forgive me for focusing in on only this one statement; it affects me the most.

I can't comment on there being nothing here for you, that's a judgement you'll have to make for yourself and I will respect you whatever you do, but I have personally gained a great deal from your participation here and would be very disappointed if you choose to leave. In many cases you have challenged me to reevaluate how I think about things musical, and in some cases how I think in general. The last thing I would ever want to do is dissmiss you in some way. I apologize if I have.

You have started our composition forum and you have nurtured some fabulous converstations there. I have been personally enriched by your presence here. In the now infamous copyright thread, I think you had some great points.

I'm at work right now and do not have the time to comment on all what happened since I wrote yestterday evening. I should write a few lines though.

I'm sorry to hear Kassen that you do not feel at home here, I am reading most of your posts here and I value your contributions and rate them high for their content. When you would leave this board would be less valuable to me.

But .. sometimes the tone you use in your postings tends to make it hard for people to read those postings for there contents.

When that happens tthings get very close to flame wars and personal attacks. I'm not saying that you are deliberately doing this, or starting it - it's just that yesterday I concluded that an explosion was near and what I tried to do was to point that out in a way that would remove some pressure - apparently I tried not hard enough.

With less pressure on the discussion people would be able to stay to the point better. I know this is not easy always. For me it helps to simply wait a while before I react on something I feel strong about - otherwise there sometimes is more emotion in my typings than is good for both me and for the readers.

i must say i was a bit suprised to see the conversation take a turn for the worse, but i think some excellent points were brought up along the way. i don't really consider my self much of either a keyboardist or a synthesist (though i really would like to be a synthesist one of these days ), so i can more easily look at the issue from both sides. i would think you'd get some suprised looks when you start talking about straying from the traditional keyboard performance features of the synth, as i'm sure a strong majority of Nord Modular owners use it in a traditional sense for the most part. Clavia wouldn't be doing much business if not for the traditional keyboardist. i don't think synths by companies like Buchla, Serge, AKS, etc sell in small numbers due solely to cost and number of units produced. features like a programmable velocity curve and portamento are things that many users have come to expect on a synth and might not want to have to build them from scratch. does it need to be a default element of every patch along with the simple arpeggiator, vibrato, and glide controls? probably not. i can definitely agree with the thought that these default features are a bit too vanilla compared to what is possible. these are also not features that everyone needs in every patch, or always (if ever for some) in the simple form that they are. maybe 'low cost' individual modules with some more customizable parameters for each of these features that could be dropped into a patch when needed would be a better solution?

i can also agree that some choices Clavia made such as the labelling of pages A-E with terms like OSC, LFO, ENV, etc is a foolish idea on such a customizable synth like this and is quite pointless when dealing with most any patch besides typical subtractive. depending on how you configure your controls, it could be useless for even this as well. i feel pretty much the same about dedicating panel space to controls such as vibrato, etc as mentioned above and can really see where Kassen is coming from. obviously not to say they shouldn't be there, but maybe implementing them in a more customizable form on a patch level would have been better all the way around._________________SoundCloud

"C'est le ton qui fait la musique.". Meaning: How you say something is just as important as what you say

it sounds remarkably close to: "The Medium is the Message" but anyway...I had completely missed this thread. I notice that many of the posters here are not native english speakers so when reading posts we should always be prepared for some misunderstanding and this thought should guide us in answering them. So breath deeply then count at least up to 10 before writing _________________homepage - blog - forum - youtube

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The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; the motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. - W. Shakespeare

Well, if we take that turn then I can´t help but feel reminded of Kim Cascone´s rather thought provoking stance that within modern digital media "the tool has become the message", particularly within the context of this discussion. I´m not sure I believe him all the way, but it certainly got me thinking.

People, I wrote a reply, it was after Jan´s last post. It was a fairly complex and lenghty text dealing somewhat self-referentially with it´s own tone and how I preceived that to be preceived. It also dealt at perhaps exagerated length with my own relation to the keyboard as a interface and a instrument, it was uniformly positive in that regard and rather personal about my youth.

I then aproached the difference between how I experienced the relation betweent the keyboard and other interfaces and how people apeared to think I saw that relation again, hoping it would be more clear in this light that mentioning "option X" is open, and should be, does not mean I don´t respect "option Y".

It was a lot of work to type and I spend a great amount of care on the tone, even if it did get somewhat agressive at some points in order to demonstrate some aspects of "tone" and frankly because by that moment I had indeed become angry. I´m patient but there is a limit to what I can and will take. It was also eaten in some server-browser miscomunication.

Then I had a apointment.

I am now realy very tirered and won´t have the energy to return to this topic for today, I´ll give it another go later.

BTW, what happens with Engine and MIDI velocity? Most of its users will have MIDI keyboards that produces normal (higher) velocities. I guess most of the instrument patches will sound to hard/bright if they were created on a regular G2?

There are those that treat the G2 like a normal synth that they can customize further than a Virus or a Nova. They can develop synth patches that aren't possible on other hardware systems in the same price range, and they like the Nord "sound". People in this school appreciate the global patch options as they can quickly try out portamento, or an arpeggiator while they're playing the synth from the keyboard. It's useful because it's quick and easy, and it's all they really want. If they want different velocity curves, they should be able to select a different one from the menu, try them all out and use whichever one is best for their patch. They don't want to have to go back to the computer and figure out how to program some shaping modules to give them the velocity curve they desire.

There are also those that treat the G2 as a gateway to brand new forms of synthesis and completely customisable, personalised patches. These people treat each patch as an instument unto itself and program it this way. For these people, the global patch parameters are ignored completely and considered a waste of resources and time. They can program their own specialised vibrato tailored specifically to this patch/instrument/variation, they should be able to program their own personalised velocity curves for each patch/variation, program their own unique arp etc.

I think the G2 is tailored more to the first group which makes sense commercially because those in the second group are the minority. Luckily Clavia have been careful to not trample on the second group while tailoring to the first. You can ignore these patch parameters and program your own. I personally can't remember the last time I used the global portamento or vibrato. But in my opinion, if Clavia decide to throw some velocity curves into the patch parameters that's fine. Velocity curves are the sort of things that I never really think about (I really enjoy the action of my K5000s keyboard), so I've never tried to patch any, but if they were in the patch parameters I'd definitely play around with them. Again, if it's in patch parameters, you can ignore it and program your own. It may be annoying to see these "keyboard player" functions everywhere, but if you ignore them and try not to think about the how you could use those resources for your own patch, it works out alright.

I suppose in some ways I fall into the first school, and in others I fall into the second. Nowadays I tend to program patches as instruments and really think about how you can interact with it (I'm still in love with morph groups), but I tend to shy away from the really low level stuff like programming arp's from scratch unless I'm feeling decidedly patient. I'm probably a little bit more in the first school than the second, and for this reason I enjoy the G2 quite alot. There are things I really dislike about the G2, but it's the only system that for the most part does exactly what I want in hardware.

I think those that are more in the second school will probably be a little dissapointed with the G2. The problem lies with the fact that it's a great interface (both software and hardware) for programming and using it like that, but it seems to be tailored for the more traditional synthesist (like Kassen said, the "KB" buttons that default to on etc). I think a company like Clavia needs to make assumptions about the people that will be using their hardware so they can market it successfully and stay afloat as a company. I think having to ignore the keyboard player/traditional synthesist features is a small price to pay for such a great programming environment, for such cheap dsp power and for a great sound (well.... don't get me started ).

Kassen: I hope the comment you made about leaving these forums was a heat of the moment type comment. Like Mosc and Jan have said, I get alot of great information and knowledge from your posts. I don't post much on these forums these days, but I make sure to try and read through them whenever I can, and I always find your posts worthy of taking the care to read them thoroughly. Also I only just realised the composition forum existed!! . I think these forums would suffer greatly if you left them now.

I thnk the G2 is a phenomenal instrument for synthesists in the second school. The business about categories, labels and "KB buttons that default to on" is bilgewater. None of those are impediments to anything. Frankly I don't understand what all the complaining is about.

And as for the topic: velocity curves for the keyboard make sense. They would simplify the business of tailoring the keyboard to a player's playing technique (whether that player is Rick Wakemen or a hunt-and-pecker like me.)

you've made some excellent points, Afrokid. i'm quite a novice user, so my few gripes should be taken lightly at best. although i never owned one, i always thought the spartan 'blank slate' design of the original NM suited the synth just right. maybe they received customer response that suggested some more traditional labelling? still seems very counter-productive based on the complexity of the synth, i think they could've just left them as pages A-E. the arpeggiator is a decent feature to have on a synth, but i must say i'm a bit turned off by the 'feel' of it compared to some other synths i've used (older Roland analogs, Novation K-series, and some others). maybe it's just me, not quite sure how to explain it. the timing feels a bit 'off' for some reason. some more choices in resolution (dotted notes, 32nds) would have been nice as well, maybe this can be added in an upgrade?

either way, i'm far more than happy with the G2. so much so that i'm actually considering selling my MPC to get an Engine to handle more drums, sequencing, and fx..._________________SoundCloud

Yeah, right on the spot Afrokid. I belong more to school 1 than school 2 too. And considering Kassen too you are right on the spot, nothing to add there.

Some more about the velocity curves. For me it is something that is part of the controller and not of the synth/patch. I mean, if you should take the keyboard and the synth physically apart as two objects I should expect the vel curve parameter on the keyboard object.

Fine tuning the velocity response is something that belongs to the controller. It is an adaption of the controller to the style of the player. So imho it should be placed in the System menu, along with the tuning, pedal polarity et al...

For all the instruments i have used i always once chose the velocity curve most applicable to my playing style and kept it there forever. There is such an adapting option already for the control pedal (Control pedal gain) and it is at 1.50 forever on my G2X. I like large ranges of control.

I can imagine that the G2 engine shouldn't have these system parameters as there is no controller present in that package of the G2.

Now at patch level there are possiblities in plenty to alter velocity response when the missing midi pitchbend module is added. And on this level it is not an adaption of the controller to the player, but an interpretation for the patch of what velocity means to it._________________Grtz Wan

Let´s split this up or it´ll be a mess. I´m also pre-emptively moving to my text editor. I like my text editor, it´s monospaced right now and has no connection to any server so it tends not to be cut off from such connections either. This is a great advantage, I feel. I would like to start off giving everybody the freedom to hate me, many people do, I´m fine with that. If you would like to be one of those, please send me a card saying "I hate you" or just chalk up another mark on your wall or whatever it is that gets you off. Please do not waste your time reading this and please, if at all possible, do not waste mine pretending you read it and disagree, then go off on imaginary tangents picking things I might also have said to pieces. This is the Nth time I´m begging this board for this, if I were planning to write a lot more after this I would make it into my signature.

On tone.

Bunnies, fluffy young animals frolicking in green fields with no barbwire fenses or machine gun nests in sight. Nice fruity lemonade, I like brightly coloured candy.//// I also disagree with many people for various reasons, all of those are open for educated, civilised debate. I will get angry with you after a while if it turns out we are not so much comunicating as I´m trying to explain things while you scream at me about what you imagined I could also have said in a alternative universe where everybody disagreed with you. If such things happen I will feel forced to use negative sounding words, I might also get emotional. However, when discussing technical topics I feel that saying the tone is as important as the content is beyond rediculous.I like content, I like information.

On keyboards.

I grew up with keybaord instruments, My own mother played the piano, my father played the accordeon (he also played the piano sometimes when he imagined he was alone), After a getting my basic musical education on the recorder I also played the accordeon, I think I studied it for five or so years. My first girlfriend played (and still plays) the piano and many of my favourite composers wrote for the piano or related keyboard instruments. Many of my favourite musicians play keyboards. I know more then one person who plays keyboards to a high standard and also programs synthesisers (by which I mean they make the synth, not merely a patch, I know people who do that too). In fact I myself own multiple keyboards, some output MIDI, some don´t, not all are styled after pianos. I enjoy those as instruments, I travel with them, I modify them. Actually I´m planning to build my own (MIDI) controler keyboard somewhere in the future because I can´t find a commercial model I find I realy like. I´m not implying that anything general could be derived from this list of unrelated facts, "data" is not the plural form of "anecdote", as I´m well aware. I am however trying to get across that I do not have a fundamental problem with either keyboards or people who play them, I certainly would never want to make "sweeping generalistions" about such a diverese bunch.

On "my school".

I´m not sure I see the reason for the devide, but that is perhaps because my first synth was a modular, before that I was using feedback loops and half broken outboard gear. It was only after years of patching that I got in contact with synths along the lines of the Virus. I always based my patches on a mixture of a certain sound or combination of sounds I liked and some means of controling or morphing those that was suitable for that sound. When, later, I started playing live as one member of a disco/electro band some set of relatively conventional sounds was needed but I found that, like I did already, the structure of those was based on both the function that was called for and the way they were to be controled. Admittedly those patches got quite close to conventional subctractive synth designs, but the additude, as far as I was concerned, was the same.

On data and controll.

All synthsised sounds demand some form of interaction at some stage. Even noodles downloaded from the internet need to be loaded. The intentions of the musician (i´m using that word in the broadest possible sense here) needs to be translated in some quantifiable data set which needs to be brought into the synthesis algorithem. This can happen in many, many ways, in real time or not and in a downright bewildering amount of ways. Currently in the "Composition" forum there is a more detailed discussion on this.There, like I tried here, I put forward the point of view that the method of data-transfer needs to suit both the sound and the musician. Some pairs of sound and musician might call for explicid, direct controll of all non-constant parameters while in other cases the musician might be likened more closely to a conductor and there are many forms imaginable inbetween. Though I am aware that not all of the possible ways of accomplishing this are equally popular, it´s my own personal opinion that all of them are equally valid as methods. I think that it´s important or at least desireable to look for the method of acomplishing this best suited to the sound and it´s place within the overall composition (as well as it´s internal structure within the synthesiser) on one side and the intentions, character, taste and indeed physical build of the musician on the other.

On data channels

This data needs to be transfered into the synthesis engine through some vector. Originally this was done explicidly, directly instructing the engine through the use of files that were read by the program, later other methods were invented that brought convenience and realtime controll at the expense of being more narrow and limited. First voltage controll (only for analogue forms of synthesis most of the time), later MIDI. Relatively recently more advanced forms of controll that offer both realtime controll and few limitations at the same time such as OSC became available. Depending on the choices I spoke about in the last section some of those methods may be suitable and others may not.In practice, when using contemporary commercial implementations, we are often stuck with MIDI. Despite the advantages, such as the general availability of affordable controlers and compatibility there are also disadvantages. Midi is by now quite old and not all of the assumptions that were made back when it was defined are relevant anymore, at least not to the degree that they were in those days. I don´t think MIDI "aged" so much because music changed, hoever, technology, particularly real-time digital synthesis grew and is now capable to perform more complex and nuanced musical structures and intonations then the hardware of back then was.

This means that we will often need to improvise with regard to exactly *how* we use MIDI, particularly when we are dealing with a system that does not implement the more modern sides of MIDI such as nrpn´s. Since MIDI makes a few asumptions about the structure of both the music it will be used for and that of the sound module it´s affecting we may need to use some parameters for other purposes then the intended ones. Particularly if we are combining interfaces of our own devising with structures for synthesis of our own design then we may well need to resort to this. This is not a big problem since we will be explicidly controling both the data generated on one side and the way it´s used on the other.

How this relates to the G2

This is how I look at controlers and how they relate to synthesis. I think the ability to remap fuctions is very important, at least it is to me. The G2, like the competition, allows this. However, unlike the competition the G2 in the design of both it´s soft and hardware exhibits a preference for keyboards which I, personally, feel harms my own experience of how reroutable controlers are. This is partially because I feel making those connections are a part of the creative, expressive process and having prewired "preset" connections give sugestions not unlike those of somebody peeking over your shoulder, telling you what to do, in my personal experience. What makes this worse -to me- is that this is a direction the Modular line has taken and apears to insist on continuing. I have attempted to steer this development in another direction. I encouraged talk of a desktop version and discouraged other developments. Clearly I am in a minority and clearly other people, perhaps people who have made the personal choice that the MIDI keyboard is their controler to the possible exclusion of others, very much enjoy this direction. I, to be clear, would like to be able to choose for a MIDI keyboard, perhaps one of those guitar models which I could hold like I held the accordeon, but I want that to be *my* choice if I make it.

Had this been the only problem then I would have tried to ignore it. It´s not like the competition is perfect in every way, however I simply found I don´t like the sound of the G2 and I´m running into some other limitations inherent in the system. Strangely what people apreceate about the G2 varies tremendously from person to person. One close friend of mine I spoke with last night is by now quite fond of the G2´s sound but experienced the lcd diplays and the knobs as "gimicky" and fantasised about a interface more like the NM. Those displays and knobs are in my own experience a beautifull touch and a clear positive point.

Much like I respect everybody´s choice, even if that choice comes down to a deep desire to feel insulted about things never said, I hope others will respect mine. The feel of a instrument is important and the feel of the G2, both sonologically and that of it´s interface is wrong for me. I tried, I realy did.

One more on velocity

If you are going to have velocity curves on a "synth level" I would think very, very carefully wether that should aply also to voices trigered by MIDI from another patch because if you do it´s no longer certain performances that work on one synth will work on another, amongst other reasons because it´s especially likely that velocity will be remaped in such internal comunications.

Wether you feel velocity is a property of the keyboard or of the internal structure of the sound is up to you, but remember that if you place it somewhere where a patch´s modulation can´t reach it then it can´t be modulated either; neither depending on what key is concerned nor on musical or sonological event.

On E-M and especially Mosc

Electro Music, even if rough at some edges is a beautifull idea.It needs to make a choice however. It´s either about discussion or about the distribution of information. Currently it´s in a hybrid phase that could easily be taken by novice users as a channel for discussion. In my (admittedly brief) experience it is unsuitable for this. This is mostly caused by either a stubborn refusal or tragic inability in many members to take in nuanced ideas through the written medium. Repeatedly I have been forced in situations where I had spend time on what I beleived would be beneficial to all only to be accused of insulting a type of musician I´m arguably myself or be accused of being a communist (that´s not so bad, IMHO, but here it was meant insultingly) for proposing we -as a society- archive creative works, I´ve also been acused of copyright infringement, disrespecting artists and a whole host of other things. Never was there any ground for this, never did editors or admins stop this, most of the time becsuse they were handing stones. Repeatedly I have physically fallen down do my knees on the floor of my room, begging people to please read what was written. Of cource I also begged them in writing on this very site, the difference in results was neglegable.

Perhaps this is merely caused by inexperience with comunicating through the written word of many people. Some experiments could be done posting one´s comments in the form of mp3 recordings of one´s voice? Perhaps some concepts could better be expressed in images or some other medium, I simply think the written word does not work here.

It might also be that my character does not fit here. From my perspective, as somebody who enjoys both reading and writing, the difference is insignifficant; I should not be here.

I commend you, Mosc, for your hard work, your good intentions and your marvelous personality. I truely like you as a person, however, I find myself unable to deal with your refusal or inability to actually read what is said and contemplate what it means.

I honestly hope we´ll be able to meet face to face again at some later date and have a verbal discussion of a more construcive nature.

on selfreferentialness

Why on earth would I yet again try explaining my postion towards keyboards and the G2 in written form, then note the written form does not work here?

Frankly I can´t say myself, some masochist streak, perhaps.

in closing

Nothing brings quite as much pure relaxation as admitting your own inadequacy and giving up.

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